New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade

The New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade is an annual parade organized by the Irish Community of New York City to honor Saint Patrick, the Patron Saint of Ireland while celebrating their Irish culture and heritage.

The parade is composed of thousands of participants from the many Irish cultural organizations and affiliated institutions across New York City, who each march under the banners of their respective groups.

The parade is led each year by a Grand Marshal, and features representation from across the uniformed services in New York City, which each have a significant affinity to the Irish community in New York.

These include the 69th New York Infantry Regiment, New York Police Department, Fire Department of the City of New York, New York Correction Department, New York Sanitation Department and New York State Department of Corrections.

The parade also features participants from across the city's political establishment, with the city's Mayors and City Councilors regularly marching in the parade.

The parade has also regularly attracted participants from national politics across both the United States and Ireland.

The parade has a record of 262 years of consistent marching. This was disrupted during the COVID-19 pandemic, though significantly smaller marches took place in 2020 and 2021. The full parade returned to its original format in 2022.

The most recent was on March 16, 2024.

Affiliated groups and other regular participants
The following list of affiliated groups and participants was taken from the 2022 Line of March, which features the 145 groups marching in the 2022 parade.

Grand marshals
A Grand Marshal of the parade is appointed each year, with the honored individual often a prominent Irish-American or someone who has contributed significantly to Irish-American affairs.

Organization
The parade is coordinated via a non-profit organisation, The St Patrick’s Day Parade Inc., which is a registered charity in New York. The charity is overseen by a board of directors which, as of 2023, included Sean Lane as chairperson, Ryan Hanlon as vice chairman, Thomas Smyth as president and Hilary Beirne as chief administrative officer. Originally from Boyle, County Roscommon in Ireland, Beirne is also a science teacher at Eastchester High School, New York and chairman of the New York City's Saint Patrick's Day Foundation. He has been recognised by a number of organizations for his contribution to the Irish-American community.

LGBT participation controversy
In 1990, New York’s Irish Gay and Lesbian Organization (IGLO) submitted a request to participate in the following year's parade. The Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), responsible for organizing the parade, rejected the request, asserting there was insufficient space. Mayor David N. Dinkins successfully negotiated to allow for the inclusion of the IGLO, partly by agreeing to join the group in the parade himself. During the parade, members of the crowd frequently booed, shouted homophobic slurs, and threw beer cans at Dinkins and the group. The organizers banned IGLO from joining the 1992 parade and Dinkins boycotted the parade in response, the first time a mayor had not attended the parade since 1923.

The New York City Human Rights Commission required the parade to include IGLO in the following year's parade, insisting the parade was public and secular, despite the protests of the AOH to the contrary. In 1993, New York City issued a parade permit to a competing group, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee, with a more liberal organization. The AOH, and several other prominent Irish organizations threatened to boycott the parade, and shortly before the parade, Federal District Court Judge Kevin Duffy ruled that the Human Right's Commission's ruling had been unconstitutional. As a result, IGLO did not participate in the 1993 parade. A similar case, Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston was brought to the US Supreme Court, which decided in 1995 that privately-organized could exclude groups even if the parade was public.

IGLO and other groups continued to protest the parade and in 2000, an inclusive "St. Pat’s For All" parade was organized. New York politician Christine Quinn criticized the continued exclusion of LGBT groups from the Fifth Avenue parade and Irish President Mary McAleese's refusal to serve as Grand Marshall was "widely believed" to be related. Mayor Bill de Blasio boycotted the Fifth Avenue parade in 2014 on the same grounds, joining "St. Pat’s For All" instead. Guinness withdrew its sponsorship of the Fifth Avenue parade the same year, and NBC threatened to stop broadcasting the parade until a LGBT group was included. As a result, a group of gay NBC employees was granted permission to join the 2015 parade and Guinness resumed its sponsorship. In 2016, the Irish gay rights group "Lavender & Green Alliance" was invited to participate in the Fifth Avenue parade.